Stand In The Rain
by upticks
Summary: Because when all your relatives die in a fire and you're forced to investigate it, you seem to fall apart. And he seems to put you back together. BB, MultiChap. M-15.
1. Prologue: The Shadows Are Long

**A/N: This story has been in the works for a long, long time. Now I've finally got around to writing it! Hurray! And I'm sorry if it's too angsty for you, but trust me, it will get better. ;)**

**Note: The title of this fic, and the premise too, was based on Stand In the Rain – Superchick. Another major inspiration is All I Need – Within Temptation. I recommend to listen to the first one while reading this prologue, and just listen to the second one when you have a chance.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own this brilliant show, or it's brilliant characters. The end.**

"_She never slows down._

_She doesn't know why but she knows that when she's all alone,_

_feels like its all coming down_

_She won't turn around_

_The shadows are long and she fears if she cries that first tear,_

_the tears will not stop raining down"_

She gulps in a big breath, it sounds loud and chunky and her throat won't swallow properly. She's trying so desperately hard not to cry, not in front of Booth and Angela and everybody.

She wants to show them she's strong; that she's alright. But she can't, and she's not. She's been reduced to a withering, crying stalk, who's primary function is to get through the day.

She doesn't know why everything suddenly seems so dire to her, why everything has crashed when only one thing has happened. Everything else has remained a constant, except perhaps for her behaviour.

But that was a catalyst; it effected her whole life, though it was not necessarily her whole life before. She feels the hole now, but she had not felt how much of her life had been patched up.

She motions to them that she needs some time alone, and that she'll be a while. She needs some fresh air, and none of them deny her that. They're worried for her, she can realize. But she's not sure how to stop them worrying.

It's raining outside the Jeffersonian, and the droplets of water slap up against the walls of the automatic doors of the Medico-Legal Lab. She pulls her coat tight around her, as if when she steps outside, the tight-fitting clothes item will protect her against the rain and the wind and the cold.

She gasps a bit when she exits, and she imagines everyone wondering what she is doing. Because let's face it, this isn't exactly the most _normal_ thing to do. But they should know she's not a normal person, as the brown coat wrapped around her becomes a slightly darker shade of brown in little spots of water.

It hits her face, and she sighs with relief. The water is cold, and relieves her hot flustered temperature. She knows she will be shivering later, but she does not care. She feels at peace, almost.

She forgets that when she thinks of peace, she remembers what it was like before. She struggles not to cry; not just for Zack, not just for when she thought Booth was dead. But she doesn't want to cry.

She wants to be Dr. Temperance Brennan, a strong and independent woman who would not be ruined and turned into such a worthless shell of life by something like this.

But she can't, and a small tear escapes her eye, a wretched sob following. She can't make out the tear from the rain droplets. Her hair is soaked, her coat is stained dark brown.

She collapses on the fortified garden wall in the middle of the large garden area she's in – the place she and Booth argued on the case that started a partnership; she remembers calling him a rat bastard.

She cries even more at the fact, and she knows she regrets crying. Because it seems like once the one tear had fallen, mixed in with all the drops of water, the rest would come out.

And they did, they fell and she sobs in large bursts and is no longer Temperance Brennan, just a sopping wreck in the gardens of the Jeffersonian.

And before she knows it, before she can register, maintain a somewhat normal appearance, pretend she isn't crying, he's there. In his suit, and it's getting all wet, his hair looks ruffled from the rain.

She wants to tell him to go back inside, because his suit shouldn't get ruined. But she doesn't have the strength, and takes to hugging him instead. He's warm, and she assumes that she is very cold and wet – this must not feel very nice to him.

She rests her head on his large chest, and if it was at a more appropriate moment, she would have noted how big and muscular it is.

Breathing in his scent, trying to stop the wracking dry sobs that come out even when you've stopped crying and your face is all red and puffy, she hears him comfort her and whisper in her ear.

"Temperance, it's alright. This is nothing; you can do this. We can do this." She is puzzled at his use of the word _we_; it connotates something she never thought they were.

But she's not fussy on analogies or sentence structure right now, and she welcomes the reassurance, even if she doesn't believe it.

"How do you know, Booth?" She looks up at him, his soppy wet hair and drenched tie and suit.

"I just do, Bones. I just do." He whispers, closing his eyes and letting the rain drop on his eyelids, resting his head on hers.

**A/N: Like it? Love it? Hate it? Do tell, I pray you! I'd absolutely love to see what you think as I'm really excited about this fic and I hope it gets the results I would like. And I hope that doesn't sound too cocky.**

**So review! You know you want to. Otherwise, Booth will break down the door and hurt his shoulder. And you wouldn't want that, would you?**


	2. Unravel

**Author's Note: I actually wrote this before the Prologue, as this was, at first draft, going to be the prologue. But I realized it wasn't the snappy, exciting stuff that makes you want to read the next chapter, and I wouldn't get a lot of readers. **

**Thankyou!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Don't you get it by now?**

TWO AND A HALF WEEKS EARLIER

"You sure you don't want some pie, Bones?" He verbally pokes at her, grinning like his son as he tries to shove a fork-full of the stuff in her mouth. She just leans backwards in the red upholstered diner chair, with a disgusted look on her face like she's just swatted a fly and it's landed in her food.

She rattles something off about how she doesn't want some **pie** and how she is not hungry at all; but if she was, she would not want some pie anyway. She makes that perfectly clear, like she's reprimanding a small child – let's forget the fact that this is Temperance Brennan, and she does not know how to act around children.

Let alone discipline them.

"Do you want some chips then?" Booth is insistent – he wants to take care of her in… what seems the only way he knows that isn't at all sexual or personal, which seems to be food. He flashes the charm smile.

"No, I had a big lunch. And I'm fine! I wish you would stop trying to care for me. I can take care of myself. Just because Zack's gone…" She trails off, hitting the exact point that was the reason that he **was **looking after her.

She obviously wasn't on the debating team in high-school.

"See, Bones? That's why I'm doing this. Because I… care about Zack, and you. And I don't want you to be torn up over this. The guy got what he deserved." His tone wavers on the last sentence, and it annoys Brennan how casually he's treating this.

Maybe it's all part of his plan to care for her. She would tell him that he doesn't need to care for her and then prove it by spending her weekend alone, but Angela is too busy moping and wondering what went wrong with her and Hodgins, and her Dad went down to visit Russ and Amy – Haley had just been let out of the hospital and they were celebrating.

She had claimed she was 'too busy' to join the get-together. But truthfully, gathering with her family made her nervous, and it confused her. She hadn't had a family for so long, and all of them together made her happy, but she also felt a slight awkwardness around them.

And strangely enough, she felt that around Booth too, but she had still stayed in D.C over the weekend. She didn't want to think on why that was so.

"I'm still not eating pie." She smirks, noticing that he's ever so slowly pushing the plate of his favourite food towards her. He grins; yet again, the three-year old idiot coming out for all to see in him.

"What? I just think that it would be benefic-" He tries to use squint words, make the eating of pie sound logical and rational to her, but he's cut off by the trill of his cell.

He holds one finger up, as if to motion her to be somewhat silent, but she's already gone to looking out the window of the diner, so he checks the caller, flips the phone open and answers.

"Booth here." He doesn't say anything else, just accompanies the speaker with a few "mms" to show that he's listening, but his face is stony.

There's a sound of garbled words that Brennan can't pick up, and Booth's face tightens up immediately. She stares at him, wondering what it is. Last time she saw this face, it was when Vince McVicar was killed and he heard about it over the phone…

"Okay, thanks. We'll be right over." He sighs, and puts the phone back down on the table. Brennan looks at him, worried as to what the call was about.

"You know the family gathering you never wanted to go to? You might be able to stop by now, because we're headed that way." Booth says dismissively, like he's being ordered to do some massive chore he wishes he didn't have to do.

"I don't get it, Booth…"

"Okay, just come with me and I'll tell you where we're going **later**. Maybe you could get some pie?" He grins, letting his partner stand up first as the two of them file out of the diner. Booth puts down a ten-dollar bill on the table just before he leaves.

…………………………………..

"Wheeew." Booth whistles. "That had to have been one big fire." He taps his fingers on the steering wheel, and takes the keys out of the car; the engine abruptly stops.

"So, where are we?" Brennan curtly asks the driver, so he can give up the other end of the deal.

Booth checks his watch. "We're just a bit more downtown than downtown DC, it's more a…"

"Suburbia." She supplies.

"Yeah, right. There's been a fire in a house on the next street. Completely decimated it, and they think the family living **in **the house is decimated too." He reels off the facts, not being particularly sympathetic to the house, or the owners either. It's just another case to him; unless foul play comes in.

"So that's why I'm here? To find bodies you're not sure even exist?" She questions him, angry.

"Yeah, pretty much. And afterwards, you can go visit your brother and your old man. They live somewhere around here, I think. So come on, let's go." He ushers her out of the car, and it irritates her how much he's looking out for her. She's managed fine for all the rest of her life, thankyou!

But as she's caught up in the irritating thoughts of Booth, a dusty, acrid smell wafts up to her nose. She wiggles the aforementioned appendage, trying, childishly, to get the smell out.

"I hate the smell of fires." Her partner states sullenly, and increases pace as he walks up to the SUV that's parked out the front of the small block of where stood, a house. Now it's more like a pile of rubble and ash.

She 'ups the ante' in her walking, so she can catch up.

"So you think the fire started around at 13:00, and was reported at 14:30? Why did it take so long?" Booth quizzes the FBI agents on site, though Brennan isn't sure why they're there: this isn't a federal matter.

"Um, are you at all certain that there actually **are** any remains I need to identify? Or is my reason for being here just speculation?" She snaps at them, grabbing her bag and walking over to what used to be the front door of the house.

"Bones… Ah, ignore my scientist there. She's a little stroppy because she forgot to have lunch."

……………………………

"Booth, look at this." She beckons to him with the one hand that isn't busy shifting through rubble, as she squats over the ashes and debris. Very fashionable, Brennan.

"Yeah?" He's bored as hell; having to sit by and watch her sift through the remainders of a house isn't all that fun. And it takes a while too.

"This looks like a… marble of sorts. See the spherical shape and the clarity?" She taps on the surface of the small, shiny ball, peering curiously at it.

"A marble, great. Aren't you supposed to be looking for bodies?" He's annoyed he had to shift from his resting place to come look at a **marble**.

"Yes, but I remember a marble distinctly like this one. It was Russ' lucky marble, I think. You know when we uh… found my mother's remains and I gave it back to him? She quickly skips over the part about her mother; it's still a touchy topic for her.

"I do, Bones, but why is it here? Is it the same marble…?" He trails off, realizing a point that he hopes Brennan doesn't click onto. If it's the same marble… he had said that Russ lived around here.

"No, it can't be." She shakes the thought away. "Give me an evidence bag, Booth. I need to get on with this." He grabs one of the piles of the plastic bags that resemble lunch wrappings, except slightly larger with the word EVIDENCE BAG written in red and white all around the middle. He under-arm throws it to her, and she scowls as she catches it.

Not that he cares all that much, though. His patience is at breaking point.

"Seriously, hurry up and find something, Bones. I'm sick of sitting here and… twiddling my thumbs!" Booth finally cracks, and almost yells his words out across the lot of charred house.

"Scientific processes should not be rushed, Booth." She says his name like an expletive, and continues moving the rubble with her gloved hands, what she's been doing for the past two hours. On the other side of the lot, FBI taskforce teams are doing the same.

"That's not scientific processes. That's what happens in the **lab**, not here!" He's exasperated, and has a low patience. Brennan knows that, but she doesn't seem in much of a rush.

To her, doing the job correctly is better than an incentive to do it quickly. She lifts up what looks like could be a door frame, just blackened and the structural integrity absolutely ruined, and she sees something.

It looks a bit like a hand; not badly burnt, the victim must have been at the other end of the house to the blaze. The charcoal of the wood though, had stained the blotchy red, burnt hand a slight tinge of black, and it didn't look good. The skin looked pale, dead.

She's sure of one thing though; that the victim, if still attached to the hand, would at the very least, be unconscious. This was one big fire.

"Booth… I found something."

He jumps up from his seat, eager that they might get out of this place some time soon. He'd never anticipated that it would take this **long**! The hand disgusts him, and he keeps his distance from it, like it's a disease that will infect him on a simple touch.

Out of nowhere, she starts pulling the hand, collapsing the rubble on top of it, releasing a poof of acrid smoke. Booth coughs, and waves a hand in front of his mouth distastefully.

"Bones, what the hell are you doing?" He almost yells at her; he likes to be in control, but he sometimes forgets that so does his partner.

"This person could be **alive**, Booth. And if so, I could be saving their life. Move back." She orders, all business as she yanks the rest of the charred body out of the wreckage. And yes, there was a full body.

She ends up wresting the body, who appeared to be male, as the burns were not so severe that main features could be identified from visible characteristics, no anthropology needed.

Checking the pulse, Brennan presses her hands to his burnt, yet pale and lifeless wrist and neck. "Nothing. Maybe a faint heart-beat, but I think he's dead." She resigns herself, then goes onto trying to identify the man.

"Looks late thirties, early fourties. It's hard to tell with this much skin, even as intact as it is." She scans over the body, trying to look for an unnatural cause of death, but avoids the head.

Booth stops mid-way an irritating comment that involved something about how she should check with him before pulling dead, smelly cadavers out of a ruined building. He doesn't though, and a good thing too.

"Wait… I think I recognize this person." Brennan's moved to the head, and brushes the black, slightly charred locks off the burnt forehead.

"I thought squints like you weren't supposed to jump to conclusions, Bones." He laughs, not getting the seriousness of the situation, or the doom that will surely fall down as the aftermath.

"No, I really do. They almost… look like Russ." She gulps, the thoughts she wanted to keep in her head and deny, spurting out. It catches her partner's attention, and he realizes that she might not be joking. He's leaning over the body too now, reassuring her.

"It could be anyone, Bones. It might not be Russ; why would it?" Questions aren't the best way to help. Brennan's trying to help herself; keep a clinical mind, keeping those thoughts in the back of her head and treat this like any other subject.

Don't panic just because it might be Russ. It could be anyone…

"You said it yourself, Booth. He lives in the area." She caves – she can't do it. Can't keep this façade that everything will be alright, is alright. Because it might not be… this could be her brother.

She lets a small tear fall on the charred charcoal wood below her feet, and her partner sees it, and kneels down next to her, wiping it away. He hugs her, whispering in her ear that everything will be alright.

But he wouldn't need to say that if it wasn't Russ… Would he?

**A/N: Like it? Hate it? Do tell, press that little purple button. Can't you hear it calling to you?**


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